I couldn't pick between my two choices so you all get both of them but they're kind of a pair.

Hereby Grace Paley

Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with heavy breastsand a nicely mapped face

how did this happenwell that's who I wanted to be

at last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt grandchild slidingon off my lap a pleasantsummer perspiration

that's my old man across the yardhe's talking to the meter readerhe's telling him the world's sad storyhow electricity is oil or uraniumand so forth I tell my grandsonrun over to your grandpa ask himto sit beside me for a minute Iam suddenly exhausted by my desireto kiss his sweet explaining lips.

Come In From The Cold by Joni MitchellBack in 1957We had to dance a foot apartAnd they hawk-eyed us from the sidelinesHolding their rulers without a heartAnd so with just a touch of our fingersI could make our circuitry explodeAll we ever wantedWas just to come in from the cold ...I feel your leg under the tableLeaning into mineI feel renewedI feel disabledBy these bonfires in my spineI don't know who the arsonist wasWhich incendiary soulBut all I ever wantedWas just to come in from the cold

(I was talking to my students a few weeks ago about subtle/symbolic language verses in-your-face sex in lyrics.)

"For what matters to them of a million deathsWhen war is the tender of life they promote?You can be sure when their reelection comes up,They won’t get my vote!For the enemy is now my chosen leader,The enemy called peace that all governments abhor!And you can be sure they won’t get any more of my sons,Till they end all war."

I apologize for potentially breaking the rules with length here but I remember Nancy liking this piece some time ago.

----Herd Remorse in Nietzsche's Terms

Come children, see the Master.He is seated at an outside tablebehind the Tortured Artiste Café.He's ready to lecture to all who would listen, andhe's buying rounds of the special of the day:melancholy on six-grain toast;coffee with cream & extra angst; andto brighten up your darkest dreams,he's serving up his theory for free.

"New truths?"he begins, as a smile plays with his lips,"There are too many old ones as it is.German philosophy is frosted glass,making men into the ruins of gods...but that is not really the problem.The problem is with my Actor.He has Falseness with a Good Conscience.If you're a poet, you'll know the game becomes serious here.

"All poets are liars & thieves,compulsively attracted to imperfection, andthe building of dungeons in the air.O, how I detesta tale told by an idiot,a gloomy question mark at the end,an exception that wants to be the rule.

"It takes the most dangerous point of viewto ridicule the spirit of gravity,to move the crowd without envy.Pity spoils the taste of the party just as muchas the sigh of the fruitless search for knowledge.(And, children, nobody forgives that.)

"Spirit and character equal work and artunless one falls into the trap of fame--seeming profound instead of being profound.But then, the lack of personality always takes its revengeon people who only want to say,`Yes'.

"One must learn to love the evil hour,the ivory tower of academic power--this is a painful age for a Thinker;`Tis a good age for selfish spirits with materialistic Notions,for all the preparatory human beingswho believe in nothing they understand.

"For the music of the best future isa rather offensive presentation:bad manners,stuttering spirits, andluxuriously expensive secret enemies.Given that nature is evil,Let us therefore be natural out loud; andLet us beware of thinking the world is a living thing--upon what would such a creature feed?"

Forget the rule of brevity. It's all so good to read. Bring whatever you like. Okay, well, maybe not the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Or Chaucer. We hates Chaucer, we does, with the fire of a million suns, we does. U No Can Haz Chaucer!! You can haz Shakespeare, though,k?

N, did you ever see A Knight's Tale? It's a charmingly stupid movie and one of my favorites of all time, and in it, Chaucer is a compulsive gambler who keeps losing everything, including his clothes, thus spending ~1/3 of the film running around nude. It's worth the price of a rental both for the cast, all of whom are great, and the hilarity of the intentional anachronisms, like a medieval court dancing to David Bowie. Every single time I watch that movie, I cry, I laugh out loud, and I stand up and cheer.

Jen, I've never seen that. Must See. Will it make me laugh as hard as I do at the scene in Scrooged where Carol Kane beats up Bill Murray? Which gives you an idea of the sophistication level of my sense of humor. :D

I'm embarrassed by my lack of poetry knowledge - and am frantically noting all of these writers, to read their work. This is great!!

Following Lisa's lead, I'm borrowing from Dan Fogelberg, one of my favorite singers - and I have to believe he borrowed from Robert Frost - it's from Netherlands (and I still don't know which road I'd take):

Once in a vision I came on some woods And stood at a fork in the road My choices were clear yet I froze with the fear Of not knowing which way to go One road was simple acceptance of life The other road offered sweet peace When I made my decision My vision became my release

The Sun and Fog ContestedThe Government of Day The Sun took down his Yellow WhipAnd drove the Fog away

----

I like the sense of movement in this one.

The RiderBy Naomi Shihab Nye

A boy told meif he roller-skated fast enoughhis loneliness couldn't catch up to him,the best reason I ever heardfor trying to be a champion.What I wonder tonightpedaling hard down King William Streetis if it translates to bicycles.A victory! To leave your lonelinesspanting behind you on some street cornerwhile you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,pink petals that have never felt loneliness,no matter how slowly they fell.

Here's another one that I like because it reminds me that it's enough to be oneself.

FamousNaomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.The loud voice is famous to silence,which knew it would inherit the earthbefore anybody said so.The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birdswatching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.The idea you carry close to your bosomis famous to your bosom.The boot is famous to the earth,more famous than the dress shoe,which is famous only to floors.The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries itand not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling menwho smile while crossing streets,sticky children in grocery lines,famous as the one who smiled back.I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,but because it never forgot what it could do.

///And we can't have poetry day without some Billy Collins!

Walking Across the AtlanticBilly Collins

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beachbefore stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlanticthinking about Spainchecking for whales, waterspouts

I feel the water holding up my weightTonight I will sleep on its rocking surface

But for now I try to imagine whatthis must look like to the fish belowthe bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

Just slipping in for a moment on some free wifi I found in an obscure corner of my hotel. I'm probably happy I didn't find it sooner since I got 9,000 words done over the last four days and very limited net access gave me not a lot of alternatives to writing. Now I just need 20,000 more before it turns into November and I can put this book to bed.

However, since my brain is currently dribbling out my ears and spattering on the keyboard, I'm pretty sure I need the break.

Anyway, hello again, and goodbye, since I shall probably have to go do spousy things before anyone answers back.

Finally, some Billy Collins. Thanks anon. Nancy predicted we'd have a lot but we haven't.

So I'll add one of his I particularly like because Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts is one of my favorite poems. http://tinyurl.com/4svwz8And I like Bosch. http://tinyurl.com/3q8u9d

Musee des Beaux Arts Revisited

As far as mental anguish goes,the old painters were no fools.They understood how the mind,the freakiest dungeon in the castle,can effortlessly imagine a crab with the face of a priestor an end table complete with genitals.

And they knew that the truly monstrouslies not so much in the wildly shocking,a skeleton spinning a wheels of fire, say,but in the small prosaic touchadded to a tableau of the hellish,the detail at the heart of the horrid.

In Bosch's The Temptation of St. Anthony,for instance, how it is not so muchthe boar-faced man in the pea-green dressthat frightens, but the white mandolin he carries,not the hooded corpse in a basket,but the way the basket is rigged to hang from a bare branch;

how, what must have driven St. Anthonyto the mossy brink of despairwas not the big, angry-looking fishin the central panel,the one with the two mouselike creaturesconferring on its tail,but rather what the fish is wearing;